Bleaching your hair

Hallopals,

I have now received about 15 public and private emails about bleaching, and
nearly all suggest that bleaching the hair does lead to a period of TTM
remission of several days to several weeks. Hair coloring also seems to start
a remission in many cases, too, although perhaps not as great or long-lived.

Mike Grant also sent me a note indicating that there are three chemical
families involved in the bleaching/coloring process, and all of them would
have antiseptic properties: ammonia, hydrogen peroxide, and dyes. Ammonia is
used to soften the hair by breaking the hair cuticle and swelling the hair
cortex, but it also greatly raises the pH of the scalp, making it inhospitable
to scalp micro-organisms. The hydrogen peroxide is used to activate the dyes,
but it also provides much free oxygen, also deadly to them. The dyes, which
persists on the scalp, are in the same family of chemicals that are
deliberately used as antiseptics (such as gentian violet), so they too would
tend to keep the scalp organisms down. Those people simply bleaching the hair
would only use the peroxide, but they would use much more of it.

Several people noted that the hair feels "clean" after such treatments, and
that it keeps this feeling for an extended period of time. A few commented
that this biological feeling might be more responsible for the remission than
the psychological feeling that it would be bad to mess up a new hairdo. That
is, a coloring or a bleaching appeared to get its effect from a skin event
rather than a mind event: no will power was involved. Several people noted
that despite precautions, the chemicals often dripped into the brows, causing
some benefits there even if the brows were not intentionally treated. (The
lashes appeared to stay off limits, however.)

I am reporting all this as if I just arrived from Mars. It is most strange to
hear of the various tortures women subject their heads to. Having no personal
experience of these things (aside from the days of my youth, when home
permanents in the 50's and 60's regularly smelled up my Mom's kitchen), I am
reluctant to make any recommendations. But it might be interesting to see if
the regular deliberate bleaching or coloring of one's hair--even if only with
one's own color!--might actually be a helpful treatment for TTM.

John (the astonished white-headed one)